Consumer products such as catamenials, diapers, packaged food etc. are often placed in rows of one or more units, whereby one or more rows are then stacked on top of or next to each other before being packaged in a box, carton, bag or other type of container. There are many types of apparatuses for forming stacks of articles, such as consumer products, and forwarding the articles to a position where they are unloaded as a stack so as to be bagged or otherwise further packaged. Examples of such apparatuses that are well known in the art are shown in commonly assigned U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,399,905 issued to Lance et al. on Aug. 23, 1983 and 4,577,453 issued to Hofeler on Mar. 25, 1986, both of which are hereby incorporated herein by reference.
Apparatuses of the type described in the above mentioned references typically load the products at an infeed or loading station, transfer the products to an outfeed or unloading station where a stack of products is unloaded. The stack is then placed into a large rotary turret which indexes or rotates the stack typically 90.degree.. This reorientation of the stack is usually done for rectangular stacks. This is because the stack products at the outfeed station of the apparatus has its longer sides positioned vertically, which is not the correct orientation required in order for the stack to be placed in a bagger or the like. The stack needs to be reoriented 90.degree., i.e. placed on its side, in order for it to be in the proper position to be bagged or otherwise further packaged. This is because most commercial baggers only handle stacks in a rectangular opening with the longer sides positioned horizontally. Moreover, the stack has greater stability when placed on its side which facilitates easier placement into a bagger or the like.
However, the above described method has its drawbacks. The placing of the stack into the turret requires the extra steps of transferring the stack from the stacking apparatus to the turret, rotary indexing the turret, stripping of the stack from the turret, and then conveying the stack to the infeed of a bagger. Because so many steps are involved, production is slowed down, resulting in increased manufacturing costs and eventual increase in final costs to the consumer.
A solution, well known in the art, for eliminating the use of a rotary turret is to take an apparatus of the type generally described above and turn it on its side so that it is horizontal. This causes the products to arrive at the outfeed or unloading station with the correct orientation and eliminates the need to use a rotary turret or the like. However, because the infeed or loading station is also in a horizontal position, the products have to be reoriented before they are placed into the stacking apparatus. This is usually accomplished by placing the product units into a pair of twist belts which reorient the product and then deliver it to the loading station.
However, this type of apparatus and method does not reduce the number of steps involved from taking the product from a production line, loading the product into the infeed of the apparatus and the unloading of the stack, with the correct orientation, at a bagger or the like. Because the product has to placed into and removed from the twist belts, the number of steps involved in the process is not reduced. Additional product transfer steps, before and after reorientation, where the product needs to be transferred to a separate reorienting device, whether a pair of twist belts or a rotary turret, causes many problems and has many disadvantages. Additional product transfer steps increase the chances of product mishandling causing manufacturing errors to occur on the line. This results in the line having to be shut down in order to correct the error, which costs time and money thereby increasing the final cost of the product to the consumer. Moreover, when using twist belts it is difficult to load more than one product unit into the apparatus at a time. The twist belts are not well adapted to handling a row of multiple products, and attempts to do so often results in a jam occurring on the line.
There has therefore been a need to provide a method for stacking, conveying and reorienting product units, which come off a production line with an incorrect orientation for any further manipulation, that requires fewer steps than the prior art methods. There has also been a need to provide an apparatus for stacking and conveying product units which is also capable of reorienting the product units, thereby eliminating the need to employ a separate apparatus for doing so.
It is therefore an object of the present invention to provide a stacking apparatus and method wherein the products are reoriented while being transferred from a loading station to an unloading station without any intermediate steps, product transfers or additional apparatuses.
It is another object of the present invention to provide such a stacking apparatus and method wherein after the product has been re-oriented it can be stripped directly from the apparatus into a packager, bagger or the like, so as to increase speed and raise efficiency.
The aforementioned and other objects of the present invention will become more apparent hereinafter.